The Simplicity of Time and Space
by AbbieNormal182
Summary: Maree meets a very strange man in a very strange way. She doesn't trust him, but when she finds herself in trouble, he's the only one to turn to... and only at a price. The Tenth Doctor.
1. Nice Shoes

The Simplicity of Time

Chapter One

"Oh, nice shoes." A man's voice came from somewhere over Maree's left shoulder, and she gasped slightly at being startled so suddenly. The comment was tinged with sincere admiration on his part, and she looked at her bright purple Chuck Taylor trainers that were propped up on the blackened wrought iron rail of the tiny café's patio, and then at his shoes: an exact match to hers, only red.

"And you." She complimented back as he took a seat at the table she was sitting at. He grinned cheerily at her and propped his feet up next to hers. Her vaguely anti-social instincts insisted that she not allow him to start any real semblance of conversation with her, so she focused her eyes back on the small text of her copy of Don Quixote. Her first class tomorrow would revolve around the content of the book, and she had barely started reading yet. She was only on her third year of the seven or eight years it would take to get her PhD, and she was already falling behind. Not a good portent of things to come.

"You know, I really don't want to interrupt, but I'm wondering something. Are you…" There was a pause, as he read a set of chunky black letters from the palm of his hand. "Maree McCormick?" The man said, apparently not put off by her most basic strategy to get rid of someone. At the sound of her name, she glanced sharply at him. By general principle, she tended not to trust men that had the capability to insert themselves into women's lives with nothing more than a flippant comment. Worse, he was handsome, that wasn't hard to see. Chocolate eyes, wildly tousled hair, and a happy smile. He seemed normal enough, but she knew that just made it more likely that he was a sociopathic axe murderer looking for his latest victim. Okay, so she could be a little bit paranoid, but better safe than dead, as her mum always used to say.

"Yes." She said simply. The pause between the question and the answer had been far too long for her to attempt a lie. He grinned at her again in apparent delight.

"Fantastic. Maree, I'm the Doctor." He said, and tapped his foot three times against the railing.

"The Doctor?" She said, raising her eyebrows at him. "Doctor what?"

"Oh!" He said suddenly, dropping his feet to the pavement with a thud. He had startled her again with the sudden movement, she hated to admit. "Oh, Maree McCormick, I like you. Usually it's 'Doctor who?' It's _never_ 'Doctor what?' Brilliant."

There was a pause. Maree blinked. "Okay. Doctor _who_, then?" 

The man frowned for a moment. "Hm. It's just 'the Doctor'. People just call me 'the Doctor'."

"It must be 'Doctor something'." Maree said, and he shook his head wearily as if he had played through this scene a million times.

"Look, if it makes it easier, call me John Smith for the moment. Just don't forget the fact that my real name is the Doctor." He said, and stood up, jamming his hands into the pockets of his brown three-piece suit.

"What did you want?" Maree asked, now thoroughly confused, finally pulling her feet down from the railing. This was very strange.

John Smith stared at her for a moment, his eyes locking with hers and then he grinned. "Give me a ring later." He turned on his heel and strolled away, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world.

This had been a very surreal experience. Why would she want to give a complete stranger a ring later? On the off chance that she had _wanted_ to give him a ring, he hadn't left a number, or any way of getting ahold of him. Okay. It was a prank. A friend of hers would ring her later and laugh about how she'd wasted 10 minutes talking to a complete stranger.

Satisfied with her explanation of the whole affair, Maree settled back into the green plastic patio chair, and flipped her book opened again. A flock of birds across the road took flight suddenly as a strange undulating whooshing noise rent the air, disturbing them from their grazing. The noise slowly faded into nothingness. She shook her head a little. Very strange.


	2. Doctor Who?

The Simplicity of Time and Space

Chapter Two

Maree stumbled out of bed at the startling sound of her alarm and stood stock still in the middle of her room as she woke up mentally. Big day today. She had four different presentations to do in her classes today, and she wasn't looking forward to a single one. One on Proust, one on the themes of Macbeth, and two (count them, two) presentations on the importance of motifs in fiction. They were group projects and unfortunately, Maree was the only one of the four students that really cared. As a result, she'd had a solid three hours of sleep that night, after completing the last presentation.

She blearily showered, counting the minutes so that she wasn't late (again). She shampooed her chestnut brown hair, thinking dreamily about having a vacation. Nothing major, even just a couple of days. She was so busy that she was making herself a little sick. Toweling off and wringing out her hair, she sighed. Maree pulled on her favourite pair of jeans and looked down at her bare stomach. She scowled suddenly and plucked a single white feather from her stomach. It hurt like the dickens as it always did, but a little pain was better than anyone ever finding out that she occasionally sprouted feathers. She knew it was weird, of course it was weird. People just didn't have feathers. However when she was a child, her mother took her to the doctor to have her tested. It was an anomaly, the doctor had said, as if Maree and her mother didn't know that. Three years of tests at a specialized facility called Torchwood yielded nothing, and –

"Shit." Maree muttered under her breath. It had been three weeks since that mysterious man 'the Doctor' had unceremoniously told her to give him a ring sometime. Now she realized why. He knew. He must be from Torchwood, she thought with disgust. It had been many years since she'd been contacted by anyone from that institution, and she had little intention of dealing with them again. Her feathers were strange, but she would rather just deal with them herself. She had lost three years of her childhood into Torchwood and was unwilling to lose any more. Meanwhile, she would keep it a secret as best she could, and that involved removing any evidence of the abnormality.

Maree finished dressing quickly, pulling on a t-shirt and a black sweater that zipped up the front. She laced up the Chucks that she loved so much and headed out the door with her shoulder bag, making sure to slam the apartment door that had a habit of sticking. She quick-stepped down the flight of stairs and sprinted down the pavement. She would be late, but perhaps she could sneak in while one of her classmates was in the midst of his or her presentation.

Rounding a corner, her trainers pounding on the pavement, Maree adjusted her bag… and felt a hand close around her arm, jerking her sideways into the alleyway. She shrieked, a short, shrill noise that betrayed her fright as she hit the pavement hard and rolled over onto her back. She stared up at her attacker in trepidation and fear. It was a very strange costume to wear in order to mug someone, she thought, irrationally focusing on the appearance of the person in front of her. From her history courses, she knew that the man was dressed as Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky. Wrapped in a sort of tunis, with a falcon's head, Horus advanced on her with measured steps. Maree scuttled backwards crab-style, finally levering herself to her feet in time to find her back against the dumpster at the end of the alley.

"Look, I don't have any money." Maree said shakily, but held out her shoulder bag to the man/falcon. "See for yourself."

The man turned his head slightly so that the falcon's eye was looking straight at her. The costume was extremely convincing, Maree would give him that. He stared for a moment, then opened his beak and squawked loudly. She jumped.

"okay." She said, thinking fast. Oh God, someone please help me, she thought, and inexplicably she thought of John Smith, imploring her to call him later. She hauled her mobile out of her pocket and stared at it dumbly. Looking up, there were three more falcon-headed men moving towards her from the mouth of the alleyway and she frantically tried to think of how to call the man that called himself 'the Doctor'. For the life of her, she didn't know why. She _should_ be calling the police.

"John Smith." Maree said in a low tone, unsure of what to do. The four Horus replicas were almost within touching distance. "John Smith!" She shrieked loudly.

What was it that he had said? 'Just don't forget the fact that my real name is the Doctor.'

"Doctor!" Maree screeched at the top of her lungs as one of the men closed his hand around her wrist. At once, there was the unfamiliar undulating, whooshing noise that had filled the air the day the Doctor had come to see her, and the men in the Horus costumes jumped back in fright. She could swear there was an outline of a room materializing around her, but that wasn't possibly. She was seeing things as a side effect of the fear.

"Well hello again." She heard a familiar voice behind her and she whirled around to face the dumpster… but the dumpster was no longer there. Instead, it was a giant room that curved upwards into a cone shape, the supports arcing up in random patterns to the ceiling. In the middle there was a circular section that looked vaguely like a console of some sort. Leaning against said console was _that man_.

"You!" Maree cried out, partly out of sheer terror and partly out of disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

"You… you gave me a ring." The Doctor (_John Smith_, Maree thought fiercely) said, sounding terribly confused at her hostile tone. "Just like I said to."

"Who _are_ you?" She said, suddenly feeling _very_ argumentative. "Where am I?" She gestured wildly, her shoulder bag slipping from her arm and hitting the floor with a dull thud. She was outside only moments ago, and then this place somehow materialized around her.

"Ah!" The man said with a smile, as if he was pleased she had asked. "You're on the Tardis."

Maree stared at him for what felt like forever. No, she would stop yelling. She was no longer being attacked by the men dressed as Horus, so that was a good thing. She would stay calm now. "What exactly is a 'Tardis'?" She asked, proud of how kind her voice was currently sounding. She would like nothing better than to fly off the handle at this man, this _doctor_ from Torchwood, but she would keep her anger reined in until her questions had been answered.

"It's my ship." He said with a casual tone, as if she should already know all about it. "Stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. It's my time machine."

Another moment of staring blankly at the man.

"I trust you remember my name?" He prompted her, raising an eyebrow.

"John." She said automatically. Good grief, she must be crazy. No, _he_ was crazy. Whatever did he mean when he said time machine? An actual time machine, like the ones in science fiction stories? It must be a dream, she decided as she tied her hair back out of force of habit. Nothing else made sense,

"Actually, it's the Doctor." He corrected her, and fiddled with a couple of things on the console. "If you'll recall, it was that name that called me to you when you needed me."

"Right." Maree stood in silence for another moment. Okay, she told herself. Embrace the dream, and soon it would be over. Just embrace the craziness. Get some answers anyway. "Right." She said again. "Okay _Doctor_. Why were those men trying to mug me?"

"Men?" He laughed a little and grinned at her. "Maree McCormick, those weren't men. They weren't even human. Why don't you sit down?" He gestured to a chair off to the right of the console.

"Not human." She said almost numbly, as she took the offered seat. "Not human." Beast?"

He looked at her with an almost sad look in his eyes before he grinned again. "Not beast. Alien. What do you make of that? Fantastic, isn't it?"

She looked at him sharply as he continued to flip switches and pull levers. "Not fantastic, Mr. Smith. Aliens? This is a ridiculous dream."

"Dream? What in the world do you mean, dream?" He asked and raised his eyebrows at her, looking very solemn. "This isn't a dream. Oh, and my name is the _Doctor_. I don't know why that name is so difficult for everyone."

"Fine. Doctor." Maree snapped, and then sighed. "What are they, then, these aliens?" She asked, resigning to the fact that she would just have to work through the dream and hopefully wake up in the morning with no recollection.

"Ah, yes. The Sruuted." The Doctor said with a vaguely ominous tone in his voice, and ran a hand through his brown hair, making it stand even more on end. "They're usually shaped like really large birds, although I haven't seen one in centuries. They try to fit in, but judging by their current guise, they've fallen out of practice. Anyway, they're sonic creatures. They scream long enough and poof!" He made a blowing up action with his hands. "All the blood vessels burst in your head and you die. Bloody awful way to die." He didn't make it sound bloody awful, though. In fact, he sounded downright cheerful about it. "Can't you hear them out there? The Tardis blocks most of the noise, so we're safe enough, but it's giving me a terrible headache."

Maree shook her head and slid off her chair to listen at the door. "No, I can't here them."

The Doctor looked at her sharply. "What do you mean you can't hear them?"

She shrugged and adjusted her sweater to make sure it was covering her stomach. "I can't hear them. I can't hear anything outside."

He came over her, practically bouncing with barely contained exuberance and shone a blue pen light in her eyes. She blinked at the sudden brightness. "That's really weird." He muttered under his breath, apparently more to himself than to her. "Really weird. Isn't that weird? Can you hear the screwdriver buzzing?"

"What? No. What are you doing?" Maree asked and batted at the blue light in exasperation.

"This is a sonic screwdriver. It's how I found you when you called for me." He murmured, still staring intently at her. "Your mobile was in your shoulder bag under the table and I just programmed it to call the Tardis when you called. That's all."

"Why don't you ever make any sense?" Maree asked, and pushed the blue light away from her face.

He let the light go off with a click and looked at her earnestly. "Can I check you out? It'll only take a second." A moment passed, then: "That's not what I meant."

She couldn't help it; she laughed. Laughed at him, at this 'time machine' he'd named the Tardis, at the aliens dressed as Egyptian gods. All of it. She laughed until her eyes watered and she was gasping for breath, sliding down the console to shake with her laughter upon the metal grate that was the floor. This wasn't a dream, she knew, but it was still bloody ridiculous.

Finally when she had caught her breath enough to wipe the tears from her eyes, she found the Doctor sitting next to her with an amused expression on his face. "Feel better now?" He asked kindly.

She nodded and grinned at him. "I thought you were making a pass at me." This prompted a fresh bout of laughter from her, and he joined in, grinning back at her.

"It did sound like that, didn't it? What I _meant_ was, can I _examine_ you? I just want to know why you can't hear the sonic creatures _or_ my sonic screwdriver." He said, now with a bit of a frown at the small pen light in his right hand.

"Examine me?" Maree said, automatically stiffening at the clinical description, remembering her conclusion about the Doctor coming from Torchwood. Her voice dropped a few degrees until it was cold as ice. "I meant to tell you, Mr. Smith, I won't be undergoing any more testing. You and yours can bugger off, because I have rights. I'm not a child anymore, and I _will_ stand up for myself." As she said this, she scrambled to her feet and backed a few feet away from him.

"What?" The Doctor said with an incredulous tone, his hands stilling on his 'sonic screwdriver.'

"I'm warning you." Maree said in a low tone, hoping she sounded as if she meant business. "You leave me alone, and tell your institution I said so."

"What?" He said again in the same disbelieving tone.

"Torchwood!" She said in exasperation. "You tell Torchwood that I'm not be trifled with anymore."

"What?!" He said, yet again.

"Stop saying that!" She yelled and stamped her foot, knowing full well that she looked like an impetuous child not getting her way. She didn't care. This man was infuriating.

"Torchwood?" The Doctor said, his mouth twisting around the word in a vaguely disturbing way, his eyes narrowing into dark slashes. "I'm not from Torchwood."

"But…" Maree faltered in her anger. "But you're a doctor. I thought…"

The man shook his head, still staring at her with those eyes narrowed in what she thought must be anger. "I'm not that kind of doctor. Besides, Torchwood is a soulless corporation." He turned to the console and began typing something on a keyboard. "Why?" He asked in a would-be casual voice, but the shift of his eyes betrayed his interest. "What problem do you have with Torchwood?"

"Nothing." Maree said, obviously unconvincingly after her outburst moments ago. "Just… nothing. Why can't I hear the sonic creatures?" She gestured to the door, to change the subject. If this man wasn't from Torchwood, she would consent to being examined. She was curious about the subject herself.

"Ah." The Doctor said, and glanced at her. "May I?" He gestured with his pen light.

"Do what you must, I suppose." Maree answered, and brushed a strand of hair from her face.

The Doctor (or John, or whatever) shifted so that he was face to face with her, and slid one hand to the back of her neck, essentially holding her head in place. His fingertips were cold against her skin and he tilted her chin up a little. Again, the little blue light shone into her eyes, and he stared very intently as he made a scanning motion down her face with it.

The light clicked off again and his hand slid from her neck, leaving nothing but a slight sensation where his fingers had rested. He continued to stare at her, as if lost in a trance. He was too close to her to be comfortable, and Maree stepped back. With the motion, the man snapped out of his reverie.

"So that was it?" She said carefully, and rested one hand against the console. It was warm, a vague vibration humming through the ship itself. "Why can't I hear them?"

"Don't know." The Doctor said, and put his sonic screwdriver into the inside pocket of his jacket. "Couldn't find a reason."

He was lying, she knew that much. So was she. She had little time to ponder this though, because he exploded into motion.

"The Sruuted have stopped screaming!" He called to her, as he flipped switches and spun dials. "The sonic of their screams is strong enough to disable the primary thrust drive of the Tardis." She gave a blank look. "Means we can't go anywhere, not in space, not in time. We were stuck until they shut up. But now we can!" He told her in that oddly exuberant way, and pumped a handle in and out about a half dozen times, and the undulating noise began again as the ship began to shake a little.

Just like, then, everything was silent, and Maree looked at the Doctor. "Time and space?"

"Oh yes." He answered with a wink, and gestured at the door. "Go look."


	3. Bigger on the Inside

The Simplicity of Time and Space

Chapter Three

When the enigmatic man who had named himself 'the Doctor' told her to open the door of his ship that supposedly traveled through space and time, Maree honestly didn't know what to think. What if she went to the door and this had all been some sort of elaborate hoax? She would feel like a right idiot for half believing that they had actually traveled through space and time, and everyone involved would have a great laugh at her expense. It wasn't that she was afraid of being embarrassed. It was that she was afraid of being conned. She wasn't a fan of being labeled 'gullible'.

The Doctor cleared his throat, obviously waiting for her to look outside. Fine, Maree thought. I'll do it, and God forbid that he's putting me on. She took a deep breath and slowly released it through her nose, gathering her courage about her. Marching to the door of the strange ship that he called the Tardis, Maree grasped the handle and pulled the door open.

"Good grief." Maree muttered, stepping down onto the softest, springiest grass she'd ever had the good fortune to step upon. The scene in front of her was more a shock than anything else. The sky was… yellow. Sort of a lemon yellow. The grass was still green but more of a pastel colour, and there were squat little cerulean blue buildings littering the valley she was looking down into.

"Just gorgeous, isn't it?" The Doctor asked, stepping out of the Tardis and closing the door firmly behind himself. "Kolionotarus, planet of the short people."

Wrenching her eyes from the beautiful but almost disturbing sight in from of her, she gave him a doubtful stare. "No, no, it's true!" He said and laughed. "Kolionotarus literally means 'short people'. The entire population is less than three feet due to some sort of lack of pituitary function, coupled with the growth inhibiting minerals in the water. It's fantastic."

"I actually don't think I like it." Maree admitted almost reluctantly, looking back at the yellow sky. Why did she acknowledge her distaste for the place with reluctance? It wasn't that she cared what he thought, but he seemed that he genuinely enjoyed the place, so she felt uncomfortable criticizing it. "The colours are kind of disconcerting and I can't figure out why." What had he said the planet's name was? Kolionotarus. Maree shook her head. She was somehow already managing to accept the idea that they were on another planet. How peculiar. Sure, she was open-minded, but she tended to reject totally ridiculous ideas. This was a ridiculous thing.

"Yeah, that's the regular reaction to this planet." The Doctor bobbed his head like a budgerigar looking in a mirror and jammed his hands in his pockets. "To be perfectly honest, you're perfectly right to feel uncomfortable. Blimey, the natives are terrible. The last time I stopped here, they almost ate both my hands." He glanced at her and immediately responded to her alarmed expression. "Didn't get them, though, see?" He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers with a grin.

Maree stared at him incredulously. "The natives eat humans?" Perfect. The man can travel in space and time, and he brings her to the scary-coloured planet with cannibals. That sounded almost like every date she'd ever been on.

"Nope." He shrugged. "The Kolions find humans to be a bit too stringy for their liking, and my hands were the only part with the proper consistency." There was a pause. "Apparently. So I've heard." Another silence, and he looked at her in a self-conscious manner.

"Your hands?" Maree said, dubiously. "They weren't too stringy?" Just ridiculous, she decided, that was the only decent word she could come up with, and she was an English major, for Pete's sake.

"Oh, no." The Doctor said seriously, and rocked back on his heels a little, pushing his trainers into the grass. "My hands were the only things that weren't too crunchy. Or so I've heard. Only humans are too stringy, not me.

She must've heard wrong. But… no, she didn't. He referred to humans as creatures not of his race. "What do you mean, only humans, and not you?"

"Well, I'm not human, Maree." The Doctor said kindly, and shrugged. "What kind of human gets to have a time machine? I mean, honestly? I'm a Time Lord."

"You're an alien." She said numbly and suddenly the discomfiting wonder she had experienced seeing the plant of Kolionotarus for the first time rushed out of her body leaving nothing but fear with the edge dulled to the point of inaction. She had escaped the Sruuted, the sonic aliens, only to be confronted with another alien. It seemed like he had saved her life, but in light of this new development, she wasn't so sure. She wasn't too sure about a lot of things anymore, so she repeated herself. "You're an alien."

The Doctor made a bit of a face. "As far as I can tell, so are you." He reached out as if he would put his hand on her shoulder.

"What?" Maree snapped and recoiled from his hand. "I am not an alien." He stared at her and raised an eyebrow. "Take me home, right now."

The eyebrow stayed cocked in an 'better believe it' position, and one corner of his mouth turned up. "Okay. That won't help your little dilemma, but okay. Come back inside the Tardis." He made a gesture towards it and she looked at the ship for the first time since she'd stepped out.

It was a police box from _maybe_ the 1950's, 1960's era. Approximatelyfour and a half feet by four and a half feet and dark blue, the little police box sat there innocently in the mint green grass. "Open the door." Maree said suddenly, her quarrel with the Doctor about her being an alien forgotten for a moment as she viewed the phenomenon that was the Tardis.

The Doctor grinned, and from the look in his eyes, she knew from the look in his eyes that he had expected this sort of reaction to the appearance of his ship. He unlocked the door of the Tardis and pushed it open. She poked her head inside. Enormous room. Came back out to see the little blue box. She walked around the box, unintentionally mimicking dozens of others who had done this exact thing. "Okay." She said finally. It wasn't an optical illusion. It wasn't a trick. It just was what it was, and she would accept that too. She stepped inside the Tardis and the Doctor followed close behind.

Repeating his previous actions, the Doctor began flipping switches and turning dials until the core of the console rose and fell like someone gasping for air with his or her lungs heaving. The ship shook and rattled, and Maree grabbed one of the curved supports for balance until all was quiet.

There was a few beats of silence and the Doctor said without a trace of amusement. "You're home."

"You know, Doctor," Maree said in a conversational tone. She was accepting. She still didn't really believe that any of this was real, but she would play along. "I happen to be an English major, and don't know an awful lot about science and the like, but I'm fairly certain that your ship defies the laws of physics."

The Doctor grinned. "She's bigger on the inside."

"Yes, she is." Maree agreed with a slight incline of her head. "Am I really at home?"

"Absolutely." The Doctor told her and gestured to the door again. "I've brought you back to your flat, if you want to go home."

Maree strode forward and placed a hand on the door, then faltered. "Did you really mean what you said? That I'm an alien? Or was that just a joke?" She was so tired. She couldn't remember ever being this tired. She was exhausted right to the very core of herself and there was nothing she wanted more than to go to sleep and not wake up until the world was restored to its proper order.

He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck in a looking-for-the-right-words sort of way. "Strictly speaking, yes and no."

"What does that mean?" Maree asked and let her hand fall from the door. She wasn't leaving. She couldn't leave. Very strange. "I'm sort of an alien, and sort of _not_ an alien?"

"Well," the Doctor started and angled his lean body against the console of his extraordinary spaceship. "In all technicalities, you _are_ an alien, yes, but only _part_ of an alien. The other half is entirely human."

"What?" She said, and shifted back towards him. Even if this was all a lie, he was going to great lengths. "I don't understand."

"Well," the Doctor said again and stroked one hand across the metal of the console, almost in a loving manner. "It's pretty simple, really. One of your parents was an alien. A Sruuted, if I'm correct." He looked up at her. "Maree, in the Sruuted culture, you are a creature of mythology."

"The Sruuted?" She asked, almost disbelievingly. "But they were trying to kill me, weren't they? If I'm…" She paused, not wanting to think about the 'half-alien' thing, then plunged forward "Half Sruuted, why would they want to kill me?"

"I'm not so sure they were, actually." The Doctor answered looking a little sheepish. "By nature, the Sruuted aren't all the fond of the human race, and I wanted you to be safe. I thought it better to swing by and get you before they did, then find out what they want with you. I picked up a stray transmission a couple hours ago concerning you. They just… want you, for some reason."

"A couple of hours ago?" Maree noted with confusion. "We met weeks ago, though." 

The Doctor patted the Tardis console again with a grin. "Time and space. I just had to find you, that's all."

"How _did_ you find me, by the way?" Maree asked, easing into the chair she had vacated earlier. She had so many questions, and he seemed to be at comfortable answering them, so she would continue asking. There was silence. "Doctor?"

"I, erm…" He said awkwardly and paused and looked at her. "I told your landlady that I was your boyfriend from out of town and that I was there for a surprise visit. She told me that you love that little café on 92nd."

She grinned at him. "Good lie."

He nodded at her, grinning back. "Thanks."

"Back to business." Maree said, her grinning sliding from her face. "How do I find out what the Sruuted want? You seem to know them pretty well. Are they more likely to roast me and devour me, or give me a million dollars for being a 'creature of mythology'?" She hoped it was the million dollars thing, but she had a sneaking suspicion that it was the devouring thing.

"Roast and devour." He answered with a hint of amusement, and twisted gracefully away from the console before coming over to her. "They weren't always." He said with a nostalgic touch to his voice. "The Sruuted used to be a peaceful race… back when they had no way to travel through space. Space travel changes everything." There was a bitter note to the statement that he quickly wiped away with a grin. "Good thing it's so much fun."

"Is it?" She said softly and he didn't answer, simply looked at her with an unfathomable expression that Maree knew hid something painful. She would let him keep his secret, because she had a secret to share herself.

"Doctor, look, this whole half-Sruuted isn't as big a shock as one would think it should be." Maree started delicately.

"Really?" He said lightly, and jammed his hands in his pockets. "I hadn't noticed, with the whole screaming fit about Torchwood."

"Yes." She answered composedly. She had to tell him. He seemed… trustworthy, although she knew that made it less likely that she should trust him. "It doesn't come as a big shock because, well…" How could she say 'I have feathers' to him? That sounded insane. How else could she say it? "Oh, to hell with it." She muttered, sliding off the chair in front of him. Grasping the bottom hem of her shirt, she pulled it up to the bottom of her ribcage, exposing her abdomen to him.

Maree looked down with trepidation making her heart race slightly. Just like she'd thought, the feathers she'd pulled out after her shower had already grown back, along with a dozen others. They grew so quickly that if she didn't pull them at least three times a day, her entire torso would be covered with feathers. They acted like an infection, though. If she kept them plucked, the feathers wouldn't spread. She looked up at the Doctor again, not surprised to see him staring at her with his mouth open.

"Look, I know it's strange, but-" Maree started angry and scared and embarrassed all at the same time before the Doctor cut her off with something she hadn't expected.

In a tone of voice that obviously conveyed his awe, the Doctor stared at the feathers on her abdomen and voiced his opinion. "That's beautiful!"

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A/N: Okay, so this entire story isn't really my best work. It's mostly based on dialogue, nothing has really happened yet, and the description is awful. Howevah, I'm feeling the distinct need to purge this storyline from my system, so please suffer through it. The ending is fantastic. :-D

Thanks for the reviews RngrThorne and Gamine Madcap!

Abby


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